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OTTAWA—Aaron Yoon, the Canadian man linked to two London, Ont., high school friends who died in a terrorist attack in Algeria, is serving a two-year jail sentence in Mauritania for having ties to Al Qaeda, says Amnesty International.

However, Yoon did not want the international human rights organization to campaign on his behalf and has asked that many details of his case remain confidential, said a researcher who spoke to him several times last summer.

Gaetan Mootoo, the researcher, told the Star that Yoon said he arrived in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott in May 2011 to learn Arabic and was arrested in December 2011.

Mootoo met the young Korean-Canadian among several other terrorism suspects detained at Nouakchott Civil Prison last summer, about six or seven months after Yoon’s arrest.

Yoon, who spoke to Mootoo in English, said at the time he was unclear what charges he was facing, but Mootoo said he has since learned Yoon was tried publicly on terrorism-related charges and sentenced to two years in prison.

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Yoon has been seen by Canadian officials, said Mootoo, who has returned to Mauritania since his first meeting with Yoon.

Canadian officials, citing privacy laws, will reveal little about Yoon’s whereabouts or legal status. Yoon’s brother has been quoted in media outlets saying he did not believe his brother was imprisoned, but he declined to speak to the Star.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, however, did reveal to the Star that nearly two dozen Canadians have run into legal trouble in north and west Africa in the past two years.

A total of 20 arrest and detention cases have been opened since 2011: five in Algeria, one in Libya, six in Mali and eight in Morocco, said a department spokesperson.

The Star had already reported one case in Mauritania in 2011 and two in 2012.

But the government would provide no further information about whether charges or convictions were filed in any of these matters. It cites “the sensitive nature of legal proceedings and the low numbers of cases” for the secrecy.

“No specific details on the arrests will be provided as this type of case detailed information may lead to the identification of the individuals and could potentially constitute a privacy breach,” said a media spokesperson in an email.

Meanwhile, Mootoo said Yoon is serving his sentence in the same prison housing other Islamist prisoners convicted of ties to Al Qaeda.

Conditions at the civil prison meet the norms for other African prisons, he said, and are not as “horrible” as those the Amnesty campaigner has seen at some terrorist detention centres.

“He was able to take a shower. He was able to walk in the corridor,” Mootoo told the Star. “I met him several times to explain the nature of Amnesty’s work.”

But the young man was adamant he did not want any help from Amnesty International, which has long publicized the cases of people who have disappeared into the world’s darkest prisons, never to be heard of again.

“I asked him if he would like Amnesty to campaign on his case and he said no,” recalled Mootoo. “You’ve got to respect the detainee’s wishes.”

Mootoo agreed it was “unusual” that Yoon would not want help but he could not discuss any further details.

Police are leaving open the possibility another Canadian’s remains may be among those still unidentified among Al Qaeda-linked terrorists who died when Algerian special forces counterattacked the hostage-holders.

The RCMP has refused to discuss any details about the case and will not confirm Yoon’s legal status in Mauritania or say whether he has been interviewed by the Mounties.

Mootoo did say Yoon was not among 14 detainees mentioned in a report published by Amnesty International in October 2012.

In that report, the human rights organization expressed concerns about continuing human rights violations in Mauritania, despite its ratification of international protocols against enforced disappearances and torture.

It cited special concern over “the continued enforced disappearance of 14 people convicted of terrorism-related offences who were transferred from the central prison in the capital Nouakchott to an unknown location on 23 May 2011.”

Mauritanian authorities continue to keep their place of detention secret, which violates the very treaties ratified by the government, Amnesty said.

The report documents the use of torture and other ill-treatment and “deplorable” conditions in several of the country’s prisons.

“Torture continues to be used as a method of investigation and repression against all types of detainees in Mauritania, men and women, alleged Islamists and people arrested for common-law offences.”

Yoon began his schooling at St. Ursula’s Catholic School in Chatham, Ont., where he was known as the class clown.

Matt Rylett, 24, who went through Grades 1 to 8 with Yoon at St. Ursula’s, finds it unthinkable that Yoon transformed into the quiet, religious man who would leave Canada to study the Qur’an in Mauritania.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he told the Star’s Alysha Hasham on Friday. “I’m in a daze.”

Rylett can’t reconcile his memories of Yoon with the media reports linking him to terrorism.

“He wasn’t a troublemaker. He never picked on anyone,” he said.

Rylett lost touch with Yoon when Yoon’s family moved to London, but when a mutual friend met Yoon on a visit to Chatham in 2005 he found him much quieter and unwilling to discuss his conversion to Islam.

“He moved and his whole life changed. … You’ve got to make friends somehow … but it seems like it happened pretty quickly.”

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